Matthew Showers: An Open Letter to the Liberty Movement

We came together out of obscurity...

I am both disappointed and outraged, yet also encouraged and determined having seen the Republican National Convention. I watched the convention with full knowledge that the corrupted politics and shady tactics the establishment practice would likely carry the day.

We came together out of obscurity, out of the proverbial woods, out of timid silence, out of confusion and out of apathy when a man who had dared to stick to his principles in a world of cowards, told the truth in sea of lies and shining a light into darkness arrived in the national spotlight. The simple country doctor showed us many things we had never before considered and justified elegantly what we always knew in our hearts to be true....

'We endorse the idea of voluntarism; self-responsibility: Family, friends, and churches to solve problems, rather than saying that some monolithic government is going to make you take care of yourself and be a better person. It's a preposterous notion: It never worked, it never will. The government can't make you a better person; it can't make you follow good habits.' - Ron Paul 1988

Either way, we can respectfully disagree without shunning him as a ‘sellout’. We have seen Rep. Justin Amash whisked into Congress by the movement, yet he attacked former governor and current Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson a few weeks back for bringing the film industry to New Mexico during Johnson’s two-terms as governor with tax incentives. Amash’s adherence to ‘central economic planning’ is as admirable as Johnson’s choice to put New Mexicans back to work, which actually proved a success story for ‘trickle-down economics’. All these men are closer to Dr. Paul’s message than not, yet many of us obsess over the few issues they differ on. Let us not be so petty. Let us not say we are more pure than he/she. Let us not throw out the term ‘sellout.’ Let us not preach that I am more Paulian than you. Or ‘I was into liberty before it was fashionable.’ This is the practice of an urban culture known as “Hipsters” who abandon art/ideas/fashion once it enters into the mainstream public consciousness or is successfully marketed, a culture that revels in obscurity and celebrates its fringe status, a culture impossible to please and in love with its outsider status. Let us not be “Liberty Hipsters.”

I mean that the libertarians make up what T. S. Eliot called a “chirping sect,” an ideological clique forever splitting into sects still smaller and odder, but rarely conjugating.

- Russell Kirk

There's some amusing irony in seeing people who state that there's no point in settling for GOP candidates like Romney just because they're the lesser evil - imagine how Rand Paul speech would be received tonight at the Dems convention; try to figure out what would be the result of people like Amash, Rand Paul, Massie or Bentivolio competing in Democrat primaries; wonder why Johnson was actually a Republican governor that was supporter by republicans and bitterly opposed by democrats - now trying to argue against "purism".